CHAPTER 08
THE LOCKED SERVICE DOOR
Graypine Station smelled of wet timber, machine oil, and coffee that had been left on a warmer too long. The train came to a halt beneath a single lamp. Passengers peered through the windows at a platform barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. The announcement described the delay as a weather-related operational review. It was accurate, but Mina heard how much the phrase left unsaid.
Jun stepped off with Anika and spoke to the station supervisor, a woman named Celia Marsh. Celia had the kind of calm that made hurried people slow their movements to match hers. She listened to the measurements, requested the current engineering notice, and led them toward a small records room beside the signal cabin. Mina and Bea were told to wait in the public office. Neither objected. A safety problem did not become less serious because a teenager wanted to watch every part of it.
Celia had run Graypine Station since the branch nearly closed a decade earlier. She had argued for its survival at council meetings where budget officers called the building inefficient and residents called it a lifeline. The station still had an old generator because she had refused to sell it for scrap. Its spare keys were labeled in her own handwriting, even if the maintenance custodian occasionally took one home by mistake. When outsiders treated Graypine as an inconvenience on their route to more important places, she answered them with timetables, not anger. She knew Rook Cut's history in practical fragments: a drainage ditch cleared after an autumn flood, a rockfall that delayed a school excursion, a stream that ran brown when the high fields became saturated. None of those memories replaced an engineering report. They did tell her which reports deserved an extra question. For Celia, experience did not replace a formal inspection; it helped her recognize the moment when a formal inspection became urgently necessary during another long mountain storm.
The records room door was locked. Celia searched a hook for a key and discovered that the maintenance custodian had taken it home. For a moment Jun stared at the door in disbelief. A simple obstacle stood between them and a cabinet that might hold the original commissioning notes.
"I have a spare in the office safe," Celia said. "Give me two minutes."
The pause gave Jun a chance to call Nessa again. Her voice came through faint but recognizable. She confirmed that the level had risen another seven centimeters. She was sheltered on high ground above the outlet, not beside the water. She had not seen slope movement, but a low grinding noise continued behind the wall.
"Stay uphill," Jun said. "Do not inspect the outlet again."
"I wasn't planning to," she replied. "I enjoy being alive."
Celia returned with the key and opened the door. The room contained filing cabinets, a dusty computer, and shelves of route diagrams. Jun found the paper commissioning binder. Anika took photographs of its index and signatures for the incident record. They discovered that the original installation certificate described the remote sensor as commissioned with valve V-17 open. Yet an attached mechanical work order, issued two days later, required V-17 to remain shut until the bypass pump had passed a pressure test.
"Where is the note confirming the valve reopened?" Anika asked.
Jun turned pages. He found a reference to a completion form but not the form itself. The binder had a place for it, marked with a neat plastic tab. It was empty.
Back in the public office, Bea gave Mina the permissible summary. The teenager asked what procedure applied when documentation was missing. Jun explained that the engineering office would normally inspect the valve in person. Because the site was inaccessible in the storm, the safe assumption would be that the remote sensor might not represent actual sump levels. The manual reading should therefore govern the temporary restriction.
"Then the train stays here," Mina said.
"That's what we've requested."
Jun spoke as though the word requested were a weight around his neck. Outside, Harker had emerged from the dining carriage and was arguing quietly with Celia. Sterling Dane stood several paces behind him. Mina could not hear the entire conversation, but she saw Celia fold her arms and shake her head. A train carrying important passengers was still a train. It needed permission to enter a protected section of line.
Bea asked Celia whether the public could obtain the commissioning binder through a records request. The supervisor said the company would have to process it, but the emergency incident report would preserve the relevant pages. Bea wrote down the report number. She treated the number like a small piece of treasure.
Sterling entered the office and found Mina tracing Revision C on her map. He looked at the notebook, then at the girl's face. "I owe you an apology," he said.
She remained silent. He continued, awkwardly, "I treated you as though a ticket meant less when it was earned rather than bought. That was wrong."
"Yes," Mina said.
He nodded, accepting the answer. "Do you believe the line is unsafe?"
"I believe people have enough questions to investigate it. I don't know what the ground is doing."
"That's more careful than the people who keep telling me nothing can happen."